The Worst Person in the World

When I watched The Worst Person in the World, I wasn’t expecting to have massive self-reflection on seeing my semi-autobiography.

And I’m still crying, but in the best way possible.🥲

The movie chronicles four years in the life of Julie (Renate Reinsve), a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

I immediately recognized writer/director Joachim Trier’s name when I saw he was the director, and I realized I knew him from 2011’s brilliant Oslo, August 21st, an equally amazing banger exploring the day in the life of Anders, Anders Danielsen Lie, who is also in Worst Person.

The Worst Person in the World is the third and final entry in what Trier has loosely referred to as his “Oslo trilogy,” a series of meditative, quietly observant melodramas set in Norway’s capital city. Since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival last summer, where Renate Reinsve earned the festival’s award for best actress, the movie would go on to receive recognition from the Academy when they nominated Worst Person for best original screenplay at the 2022 Academy Awards. The Oscar would go to Belfast (blahhh), but it remains a winner in my heart.♥️

Trier describes Worst Person as a “coming-of-age movie for grownups” and he’s right. I found this quote in the movie, and it really slaps…

“That’s all I have. I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books, and I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it’s all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about.”

I felt this movie on a hyper-personal level. Very close to being my movie of the year without a shadow of doubt. Julie is an ever changing person. She makes bad decisions and good decisions and worries about the wrong things. She is the best worst person in the world.